[UPDATE 2/3/2012 4:00PM] Apparently the BlackBerry community's response to this original offer was huge. So huge in fact that RIM is now extending this offer to "any app – WebWorks, Native, AIR, and Android. Same deadline of February 13 applies."

------------------------------------------------------

There is huge buzz surrounding the release of OS 2.0 for the BlackBerry PlayBook. With the possible release date a little over two weeks away, RIM is doing everything it can to get as many Android apps as possible ready for the new OS launch. Today, the Inside BlackBerry Blog posted a new promotion for Android app developers:

More details about the promotion will be posted on the Inside BlackBerry Blog as soon as possible but for now that stands to be a pretty awesome promotion for Android app developers. We're hopeful this creates a nice wave of developers that if, for no other reason, will port their apps over to App World to get a free tablet.

This is a pretty smart idea on RIM's part. With the recent low prices of the PlayBook, odds are most people are opting to go for a higher capacity tablet (32GB and 64GB), leaving RIM with a lot of 16GB tablets lying around. Giving these away in exchange for something, like Android apps in App World, will only help the momentum of the OS 2.0 launch. Smart move RIM, smart move indeed.

• Download BlackBerry Music Store via App World
• Discuss BlackBerry Music Store in our Forums

[Mobile? Click Here for Video]

• Download Twitter For Blackberry
• Download Facebook For Blackberry
• Download FourSquare For Blackberry
• Discuss BlackBerry Social Media Solutions for Business in our Forums

One of my favorites apps, ScoreMobile, was updated today. The extremely popular score-tracking app has released version v1.8.6 in App World for everyone to download. Nothing new in terms of features but when a new version comes around it's always a good idea to upgrade.

Research In Motion has released two new "Be Bold" commercials that continues their 2012 campaign for the Bold 9900. They are again taking the almost-interview approach with these new ads as they highlight a pair of musicians and a food buyer for celebrity chefs.

[Mobile? Click Here for Video]

Peter Cheong is the selfless individual behind the Shelter Home for Children, a home for abused and neglected children. Peter is an avid BlackBerry user and currently owns a BlackBerry Bold 9900. With his Bold 9900 smartphone, Peter connects with like-minded individuals and volunteers who share his passion to serve the community.

Interested to lend a helping hand for the Shelter Home for Children? Visit www.shelterhome.org for more info.

Coming into her second week of work at her new position, Barbara Stymiest, is already facing investor heat about her appointment. On Sunday, January 29th, RIM had a shake up at some key management positions; one of those being Stymiest as new Chair of the Board. Change seems to the message she hopes to spread in her role as Chair and she believes that it can be done.

“Driving change in an organization means a high-performing board and a high-quality management team,” Stymiest said in an interview with Bloomberg yesterday. “You get those two right and you can drive change quickly and effectively.”

Not everyone seems to effectively agree though. Jaguar CEO Vic Alboini said “she’s been part of the problem. I don’t think she’s going to be strong enough to make the changes necessary. We would say to her, ‘Prove us wrong.’” Another critic of the changes, Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co., believes previous management changed “as little change as possible” with these moves.

Stymiest remains positive amid all this. “We can improve on product execution and Thorsten is well- positioned to do that.” One way to be able to accomplish this according to Stymiest is the acquisition of more patents. “You’ll continue to see RIM make strategic acquisitions of patents to give it the degrees of freedom to have the most competitive, compelling device going forward,” she said.

At the end of the day, it's all about delivering a high quality product, correctly and on time. Barbara Stymiest believes her experience will allow her to provide “flawless oversight” of the management team which will get this done. Let's hope she's right.

By now every theme developer knows the frustration of not being able to build themes for OS 7 devices. Although RIM has mentioned the reason for the delay in releasing theme builder 7, it has not kept people from creating their own through workarounds and hacks. There have been a few OS 7 themes that have come out recently that are clean and simple, but the pressure to create more robust and complete themes is mounting.

It seems as though RIM has listened to the cries of consumers who want to add a fresh touch to their OS 7 device, and has released some instructions on how to use Theme Studio 6 to build themes for BlackBerry 7 devices.

Here's a couple of cool new little features that have been popping up in App World for OS 7 and 7.1 users: New Ringtones and Themes Sections. Although this may not be huge news, it is nice to see our beloved App World get more and more organized as time passes by.

The ironic part about this whole thing is only OS 7 users and above can see the new Theme section and up until recently, OS 7 weren't even able to have any themes available to them. So far it looks like they have a nice little catalog going so make sure you check out App World to see if both of these sections are there already for you!

This morning, we saw around the web how much Research In Motion really can't catch a break nowadays. The Inside BlackBerry Blog posted up an infograph detailing how the #BeBold tweets from New Year's Eve's Special had broken down. Unfortunately for RIM, people saw this as a possible marketing campaign in the making and the snowball began.

Headlines like "RIM: 'It's okay, we have super heroes,'" or "RIM Escapes to Fantasy World, Imagines Superheroes Will Save It... Literally" from some of the world's top tech blogs started to pour in. The ridicule was so overwhelming that it forced RIM to yet again answer "bloggers" by clarifying it was only an infograph for fun. The impression has stayed though. What was originally written will continue to permeate through people's minds regardless of what reasons are given after the fact.

The first image of the BlackBerry London, RIM's first BlackBerry 10 phone, has surfaced. This is a far cry from the earlier leaked photos that we saw last year. However, it does give us some real hope that the BlackBerry 10 devices are almost within reach. RIM has been giving us hints about this device for quite some time now, and if you look at the picture closely it may remind you of something else.

If you're thinking BlackBerry PlayBook then you're on the right track. Late last year when Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was asked what the QNX-based phone would look like, he then held up a PlayBook, and said, "like this." The look is fresh, and steps away from RIM's traditional style devices that many have become use to. It is actually similar in nature to a Samsung or HTC device. It looks like it's out with the old and in with the new in the design department for this device.

We have been seeing quite a few BBM connected apps over the past few months, and many have been wondering when we would see some native apps like RIM's Facebook and Twitter become BBM connected. Well, it looks as though we may be seeing this feature pretty soon.

So if you were wondering when you would see these apps integrated within your BBM, wonder no more, because RIM is working on it. The days of boring status updates on BBM may be over.

Today RIM announced the availability BlackBerry® Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365. This new service allows organizations to expand their Microsoft mail services to the cloud and manage their BlackBerry deployments in the cloud.

One of the nice things about this service is that customers that are already subscribed to the Office 365 suite or standalone Exchange Online and works with BlackBerry smartphones on business or consumer data plans. The service is actually very robust and offers a comparable features that a typical BES server would have.

Having it cloud based makes it an affordable alternative for many organizations. In addition RIM's partnership with software giant Microsoft helps alleviate some of the nasty licensing that many organizations have to go through. Here is a brief statement taken from RIM's official press release:

Hello BBOS members and guests, it's time for our Recap for the week of 1/22 - 1/28, 2012. The links below are the "in a nutshell" of what happened in everything BlackBerry last week. Leave us a comment on what you thought was the most memorable moment of the BlackBerry Weekly Recap!

-------------------------------------

-------------------------------------

-------------------------------------